John Fellowes stands on the outdoor patio of a building that is home to his company’s Design & Experience Center in Fulton Market, pointing toward downtown at the stunning Chicago skyline.
“We started our family business a little less than a mile from here on the other side of the river,” he says, gesturing to a spot on Wells Street (formerly called South Fifth Avenue) in what is now the River North neighborhood.
While the company was founded 107 years ago, not far from Fellowes’ spectacular new showroom, innovation, and customer-centric evolution have been part of the brand’s story from the beginning.
Fellowes began in 1917 as the Bankers Box Company – a small, specialized business with a focused product portfolio in records management, primarily serving the banking and financial services industries. Despite its modest size and narrow initial product offering, the leaders of this young company understood that when products are designed and manufactured with a commitment to quality and solving very real workplace challenges, success tends to follow.
Building from a distinctive solutions-driven and customer-obsessed company culture, the Bankers Box Company continued to grow and evolve through the 20th century under generational family leadership and ownership. One of the most recent significant strategic shifts occurred in 1983, when Fellowes Brands was still called the Bankers Box Company, but changed its name to Fellowes Manufacturing Co. Fellowes said that the company noticed a shift in the market. The thousands of office products dealers that the company worked with across the country started experiencing new challenges. The first big box office supply stores started popping up at that time. A mass consolidation — from mom-and-pop office supply stores to massive superstores — transformed the industry. Office Depot, OfficeMax, and Staples took over the channel. Soon after, Walmart, Amazon, and other big box stores began selling office products as well.
During the same time, with the adoption of the computer workspace, more workers found themselves in workstations, sitting at desks, managing larger workloads, and handling large amounts of information and documents. This development provided an opportunity for Fellowes to expand its brand and categories from records management to a broader market position including ergonomic solutions, workspace management, and business machines.
By the turn of the century, Fellowes had expanded into a growing global brand of solutions that enabled productivity, comfort, and organization in the office. However, the next wave of societal and generational change was just around the corner: digitization. As Fellowes prepared to transition its leadership from the 3rd to the 4th generation of family in 2012, it became a natural time to take a broad assessment of the marketplace and the future of the business. By this time, it had become clear that office paper usage was on a predictable decline, peaking in 2001.
“This is when we started to look beyond categories and explored opportunities to expand the markets that we serve to bring greater vitality and runway to our future. As we looked back, we noticed that our traditional office products channel had consolidated considerably over the past few decades and that categories that touched paper in one way or another would be fundamentally challenged in future years,” said Fellowes, “and, so, we looked for ways that we could continue to serve businesses and workers in new ways. At the time, we had made a significant investment in our product development, innovation, quality, and design capabilities under a campaign we called “Innovation in Motion”. This ultimately birthed a company-wide effort where we re-embraced our foundational values but also reimagined our future. We renovated most of our US and international facilities, messaged our brand for future relevance, initiated aggressive 3-year plans, and tried a lot of new things”.
The momentum grew, and in 2014 Fellowes launched its first commercial air purifier, followed by sit-stand desks and the Elea task chair. In 2017 the company introduced its Lotus Sit-Stand Workstation and acquired ESI Ergonomic Solutions, a provider of monitor arms, height-adjustable tables, and power solutions. Fellowes also invested in Posturite, a U.K.-based ergonomic consultant, and later acquired Trendway, further expanding into the commercial interiors industry.
“As we continued our journey, we naturally found ourselves drawn to contract categories and markets. These markets had a ‘human element’ to them as each project was unique and also required precision, quality, and creativity. We found ourselves excited by the opportunities to work with other family business dealers across the country and partner on projects that delighted clients and users. That’s why we like this contract channel. It is very focused on dealers all over the country who are trying to create great experiences for their customers,” said Fellowes. “We also found that we could apply our product and marketing approach in a unique way because of the other influences and demands that we had in our past. It felt like we had distinctive value to bring to the table.”
Coming from a different segment has its advantages and disadvantages. Fellowes has always understood the need to focus on the human side of the business and develop loyal customers. But it also brings over 100 years of experience competing on a global stage, which has driven the company’s commitment to innovation.
Fellowes was one of the first brands to embrace Fulton Market as the location for its Fellowes Design & Experience Center. The company moved into its showroom at 800 W. Fulton in June 2023. After it acquired ESI and Trendway, the company found its brands were split. ESI was in the MART and Trendway’s showroom was on the lower level of the Helene Curtis building across the street. The company decided it was time to bring all the brands together in its new Fulton Market showroom.
The Fellowes Design & Experience Center is an immersive exploration of design, technology, and function — part product showcase, part product lab, and part collaborative space. The 12,000-square-foot showroom is WELL Certified Silver by the International WELL Building Institute.
“We really liked the idea that this could be a showroom that we could truly use throughout the year. We felt we had a great showroom for NeoCon (at theMART), but we didn’t get as much use out of it on an ongoing basis,” he said.
The new showroom was designed to give visitors, partners, and customers a look at the world of WorkLife through a Fellowes lens. They did not want the showroom to look or feel like a museum with exhibits of products. Instead, the goal was to show how all of its products integrate, and all it takes is a short walk through the space to understand how. Monitor arms, markerboards, and back-painted glass work together to create distinctive, design-forward spaces for work and connection. Its modular wall systems, a key pickup from the Trendway acquisition, are shown with its air treatment products. This new showroom was also timed well with new alliance partnerships with Skyline and 3form that was announced this past year.
There is also an Innovation Lab in the showroom, a place where Fellowes can take a product apart and show customers the differences between its products and those of its competitors. For engineering and construction-minded guests, cross sections of modular walls and wall components are available to inspect.
One of the highlights of the showroom is PORTRAY, a room-sized configuration tool that Fellowes built from the ground up that leverages Unreal, the same software used in the video game Fortnite. Visiting groups can enter the room and use a control panel in front of the screen to pull objects into a space, change paint colors, explore fabrics, and adjust other elements of the product using sample chips that are embedded with information. PORTRAY gives designers and customers the chance to mock up a space or take a closer look at products that may be used in a project.
“It’s a quick way for somebody to work in a pre-configured environment for a project. It takes only a few seconds to set it up, and designers or clients can experiment in real-time with colors, textures, and materials,” said Fellowes.
“We want this room to be fun, interactive, and educational,” said Jami Bruno, brand experience manager. “It’s designed to be used in conjunction with all the other rooms at Fulton, offering a comprehensive experience that ties together innovation, product exploration, and design.”
Air purification, a category Fellowes entered in 2010, plays a key role in the showroom as well. The company’s Array system, an integrated air quality solution, is prominently featured in a dedicated room where its technology is explained and demonstrated.
When standing in the Design & Experience Center, it is clear that the last few decades of expansion have certainly involved a lot of evolution for a brand over 100 years in the making. But despite those changes, the company remains dedicated to the values and principles that have shaped its legacy, and will ultimately define its future. There’s a distinctive sense of pride and optimism that permeates the Fellowes team, and it’s present whether they are discussing the company’s storied past, or where the company is headed next.
“Serving at the intersection of innovation, family, quality, and care is and will continue to be the heartbeat of our company,” said Fellowes. “While the world will continue to change and we will continue to evolve, our culture remains our most important asset. We have been blessed with great people who have helped us build our business and that tradition of good people is one that we benefit greatly from today.”
